In recent years, the opportunity for ordinary persons who go abroad is increasing, and the number of people who live in a foreign country is also increasing. Furthermore, a progress of communication technology or computer networking technology such as an Internet is also remarkable. Therefore, since an opportunity to communicate in a foreign language and an opportunity to interact with a foreigner has increased, a need for exchange between different cultures or between different languages has been increasing. This is an inevitable flow because the world is becoming borderless, and it is thought that this tendency continues to be accelerated.
For the purpose of exchange messages cut across different languages or between different cultures, the necessity of communication in different languages for persons whose native languages are different, or the necessity of communication between different cultures for persons whose cultural background are different, are increasing.
As a method for communicating with one person who speaks a different language from another person's native language, one person can learn another person's native language, or use a translator who can mutually translates between a plurality of languages, can be considered.
However, learning a foreign language is not easy for anyone, and requires great time and costs. Furthermore, even if a particular person can master one foreign language, his partner may not be able to use the language which the particular person has mastered. In this case, it is necessary for the particular person to master a second or third foreign language, and the resulting difficulty of language learning increases.
Moreover, since the translator is a professional with special skill, the number of the translators is also limited, and the employment costs are also high. As a result, generally it is seldom used.
When ordinary people travel abroad, they often use a book with conversation phrases normally encountered with its translation. In this book, various kinds of expressions of fixed form phrase for communication are recorded.
However, since the number of conversation phrases in the book is restricted, all expressions needed in an actual conversation cannot be covered, and the collection of conversation phrases is inadequate. Moreover, it is very difficult for a user to memorize the fixed form phrase recorded in the collection of conversation phrases in the same way of learning of foreign language. Since the collection of conversation phrases is a form of the book, it is difficult for a user to quickly discover the page in which a necessary expression is described in the scene of an actual conversation. Therefore, in the actual communication, it is not necessarily effective.
Alternatively, an electronic translator as a portable size in which the collection of conversation phrases is electronically maintained may be used. A user may use the electronic translator by hand and specifies a sentence to be translated by a keyboard or a menu selection operation. The electronic translator changes an input sentence into a foreign country language, and outputs the translated sentence through a display or a loudspeaker. In this way, communication with a partner who speaks a different language is performed.
In the electronic translator, the time and effort to retrieve conversation phrases necessary for a user is minimally reduced when compared with the book (collection of conversation phrases). However, in the same way of the book, the electronic translator stores the limited fixed form phrases and some extended expressions which are partially transformed only from the fixed form phrases. In short, sufficient communication between persons each of which native foreign language is different cannot be enabled.
Moreover, if the number of conversation phrases of the electronic translator increases, the user's operation of the electronic translator is executed by a keyboard and a menu selection. As a result, it is difficult for the user to select a sentence to be translated. In short, validity in actual communication falls.
Thus, in the prior art, it is a problem that there are no tools to sufficiently support communication among a plurality of persons whose use languages are different.